Although there has been active research and development regarding sensors, there has been very limited work on integrated systems that combine various features needed for certain practical sensor applications. Integrated senor systems are needed in a wide variety of applications including, medical diagnostics, homeland defense, forensic and investigative, pharmaceutical, food, and agricultural product analysis, environmental bioremediation and monitoring, bioprocess monitoring and biotechnology applications. Unlike fundamental research, portability of instrumentation is an important factor in environmental field monitoring and clinical applications.
Previously disclosed sensor systems have generally relied on commercially available spectrographs equipped with photomultipliers (PMTs) or 2-dimensional detectors, such as charge-coupled device (CCD) based systems, which require bulky electronic and data conditioning accessories. These detector systems required high-voltage power supply systems that often limit these systems for use under field conditions. Besides being bulky, when used in spectroscopy applications these devices limit the available spectroscopic analysis techniques which can be used. For example, phase-sensitive detection is not possible using conventional CCD based systems.